More Than We Can Tell

Friday, March 16      3:28 a.m.

From: N1ghtmare

To: Azure M

Don’t make me find you, bitch.

And a good morning to him, too.

I don’t delete this one. I don’t ban him yet either. No banning before coffee.

Mom is in the kitchen when I go downstairs. She’s standing at the counter, eating a breakfast of fruit and cottage cheese. It’s barely six thirty, but she’s already showered and dressed for work. She runs five miles every morning, too. The very picture of discipline.

“You look tired,” she says to me.

I debate whether that’s worse than some rando on the Internet calling me a bitch.

I shrug and find a mug. “Tell that to the county school system. I don’t make the schedule.”

“How late were you up?”

Until two. I ran missions with Ethan until my eyes went blurry. Cait joined us after her mom was in bed and there was no one to guard the family computer. We started on OtherLANDS and then moved over to Battle Guilds when he asked if we wanted to do something new. It’s not a game I play often, because it was built by a competitor of Dad’s company, but I wasn’t turning down an invitation. That’s never happened before. Usually guys sign off to go play with someone else.

I shrug and pull the creamer out of the refrigerator. “I don’t remember. I was reading.”

“I’ve told you before that I don’t like you drinking coffee, Emma.”

I’ve ignored her before, too. I dump a quarter of a cup of sugar into my mug. “I’m sorry, what?”

Her lips purse. “I know your father stays up until all hours of the night, but he doesn’t need to be in class at seven thirty.”

“That’s because he’s lucky.”

“That’s because he’s an adult.” She pauses. “Or at least he pretends to be—”

“Mom.” I glare at her. She knows I don’t like the sniping.

“I know you’re enjoying the computers and the games, but I hope you’re aware what a competitive field—”

“Because you slid right into medicine?” I sip at my coffee and head for the stairs. “I forgot how easy it was for you to get into Columbia.”

“Emma. Emma, come back here.”

I’m already halfway up the stairs. “I need to take a shower.”

I’m grateful for the fan and the rattle of water against the bathtub. I turn the water as hot as I can tolerate and step into the steam. It burns my scalp.

Don’t make me find you, bitch.

My eyes burn, and I turn my face to the stream of water. I hate that there are people like him. I hate it.

Dad has a female coworker who gets a lot worse. Death threats. Rape threats. It’s rampant in the industry. I need to learn to deal with it now if I want to make a career out of this.

But still. The words have set up shop in my brain, a constant thrum of warning. Don’t make me find you.

I remind myself that he’s probably thirteen and bored.

The doorknob clicks. “Emma. I want to talk to you—”

“Mom! Oh my god, I’m in the shower!”

“You do realize there’s a curtain. And I’m your mother. And a doctor. I have seen—”

“Mom!”

“Emma.” She sounds closer. “I don’t have a problem with the computers or the coding. I hope you know that. But I worry that your father’s habits may have given you an unfair expectation—”

“Mom.” I pull the curtain around my face and look out at her. She’s sitting on the closed toilet. The steam has already curled the tendrils of hair that escaped her ponytail. “Dad works just as many hours as you do. I know it’s not all fun and games.”

“I just want to make sure that you realize that creative endeavors are always more complicated. We would be having the same conversation if you wanted to be an artist … or a writer … or an actress …” Her voice trails off, and she sounds more displeased with each progressive career.

Shampoo finds my eyes, and I duck back into the shower. “Wow, thanks for the pep talk about following my dreams.”

“Dreams won’t pay a mortgage, Emma. I just want to be sure you’re thinking objectively about this. You’re a junior in high school.”

“Mom, I’m pretty sure knowing how to write code will help me find a job.”

“I know it will. Playing games until two a.m. and scraping through the day won’t.”

I can’t say much to that. She makes me feel like such a slacker.

Combined with the e-mail I received this morning, the burn in my eyes returns.

“Is your homework done?” she asks.

“Of course.” My voice almost breaks, and I hope the shower is enough to cover it up.

“Emma?” She sounds surprised. “Are you upset?”

“I’m fine.”

She begins to pull the shower curtain to the side.

I grab it and yank it shut. “Mom! Are you kidding me right now?”

“I just wanted to make sure—”

“Would you get out of here? I need to finish getting ready for school.”

For a long moment, she says nothing.

During that moment, I think of all the things I want to say to her.

Do you know I wrote my own game? I wrote the whole thing. And people actually play it. Hundreds of people. I did that. I DID THAT.

I’m terrified she’d find the whole thing a waste of time.

And then she’d make me delete it so I could focus on something “more productive.”

“Emma,” she says quietly.

I push the water off my face. “Mom, it’s fine. I’m fine. Go to work. I’m sure you have patients to see.”

I hold my breath, and in that moment, I’m torn between hoping she’ll stay and hoping she’ll leave.

I don’t know why. It’s ridiculous. She has so much contempt for everything I love.

Then the door clicks, and it doesn’t matter. She did exactly what I asked.

“Why don’t they sell coffee at lunch?” says Cait. She’s paying the price for our two a.m. gaming, too. We’re all but slumped on the lunch table. Even her makeup seems lackluster this morning: glitter eyeliner is about as daring as she got.

“Because they’re sadists.” I poke at a slice of pizza on my tray. “Want to ditch next period and walk to Dunkin’ Donuts?”

“If I got caught cutting class, my makeup would be in the Dumpster, and Mom would sell my camera.”

“And what a tragedy that would be.”

She startles a little, and I realize what I’ve said. I wince. “Sorry. I didn’t mean—I don’t even know what I’m saying.”

Her expression is frozen in this space between hurt and confused. “What did you mean?”

“I didn’t mean anything, Cait. Really.”

She’s staring at me like she’s trying to decide whether to push or to let it go.

I don’t even know why I said that. My mouth needs to be reconnected to my brain. “It was stupid. I was trying to make a joke but I’m too tired to make it happen.”

A tiny line has appeared between her eyebrows, but she sits back. “Okay.” She pauses, and the slowly growing wall between us gains a few more bricks.

I had considered telling her about Nightmare, but the air between us is full of tension now. Cait wouldn’t understand anyway. The worst kind of troll she faces is someone who accuses her of copying makeup designs or calling her ugly. She has no problem shutting them down. She wouldn’t understand why I can’t do the same.

Motion across the cafeteria catches my eye. That guy from behind the church is sitting at a table in the corner. He’s wearing a maroon hoodie today, the hood low enough to block his eyes from view. He’s got half a dozen plastic containers spread on the table in front of him. It looks like he’s sharing with another guy, someone with reddish-brown hair.

I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen two guys share a lunch.

Check that. I can count on one finger.

It’s about the same number of times a guy has quoted the Bible to me.

I pull a purple pen out of my bag and draw stripes across my fingernails, just to give my hands something to do while I stalk Mr. Tall, Dark, and Hooded. A girl joins the two boys in the back corner. She’s pretty, with long, shining dark hair and trim-fitting clothes. Preppy. Glossy. The type of girl I usually avoid, for the simple reason that they always look completely together, and I generally need a computer in front of me to communicate. I have no idea who she is.

Then again, she’s sitting with the Grim Reaper, not sitting on the quad gossiping about him, so maybe she’s not all bad.

“Why is it okay for you to draw on your nails, but it’s not okay for me to do it with real makeup?” says Cait.

My hand stops. “You can do whatever you want with makeup,” I say tightly. “It was a stupid comment.”

“Okay.”

It doesn’t sound okay at all. I hesitate, wishing I could fix this. “I was watching that guy over there. Do you know who he is?”

She twists on the bench to look. “Yeah,” she says. “He’s in my Sociology class. Why?”

“What’s his name?”

“Rev Fletcher. Why?”

I watch him eat from a container with a fork. A real metal fork. “Is he gay?”

“Wait. Let me check.” She screws up her face. “Oops. Sorry. Telepathy is down again.”

I can’t decide if she’s trying to lighten the mood or darken it. “Do you know what’s up with him and the hoodies?”

She glances over her shoulder again. “No. Mrs. Van Eyck makes him take the hood down during class, though.”

“Does he wear it every day?” I don’t know why I care, but it’s like I’ve found a source of information, and the download speed is pathetic.

“Yes. Not the same one, though. He doesn’t smell or anything. He’s very quiet. Doesn’t say a lot.” She pauses. “Why are you interested in Rev Fletcher?”

I don’t know. I can’t pin it down.

Are you okay?

No.

He seems fine now. But also … not. Some small, hidden part of me wants to walk over there and ask him again.

I can see it now. Hey, remember me? You scared me beside the church. Fed my dog some nuggets. Discussed existentialism?

Sure.

He has friends. He’s eating lunch. He doesn’t need me.

But if he has friends, why was he hiding beside the church with that letter?

“Emma?”

“It was nothing,” I say to Cait. “I ran into him when I was walking the dog.”

“Was it weird? I feel like he’d be weird outside of school.” She makes a face. “I mean, he’s weird inside of school—”

“Not weird.” I pause. “Unusual.”

“There’s a difference?”

“You wear a different face every day. You tell me.”

She jerks back, and I wish I could suck the words back into my mouth. I didn’t mean the words as an insult—or maybe I did. I’m too tired to know.

She shrugs her backpack over her shoulder. “I need to go change out some books before class. I’ll see you later, okay?”

Before I can say anything, she slides through the crush of students.

With a sigh, I gather my things and head to class myself.

I’m the only junior in AP Computer Science. I’m also one of only three girls. I slept through Introduction to Coding last year, but it was a mandatory prerequisite. I could have taught the class. When Mr. Price noticed that I was doing homework for other classes while he was droning at the Smartboard, he offered extra credit if I designed something myself. I think he expected something pathetic and basic so he could pat me on the head and pretend he was challenging me. When he logged in to OtherLANDS, he choked on his coffee.

Seriously. He almost sprayed me with it.

This isn’t my first game. It’s my sixth. No one comes out of the gate with an online RPG. Well, no one I know. Not even Dad. He started teaching me to write code when I was seven years old, showing me Pong and telling me to see if I could re-create it. By the time I was ten, I was making basic two-dimensional games. By the time I was thirteen, I could handle 3-D graphics. OtherLANDS is the hardest thing I’ve ever done.

Dad has never played. He doesn’t even know about it.

He’s a senior programmer for Axis Gaming. His next release is supposed to integrate with mobile, allowing people to switch from desktop gaming to their phones seamlessly, going from battle missions to scouting missions. I’ve seen some screen shots, and it’s amazing.

I can’t wait to show him OtherLANDS. But it has to be perfect first.

Meaning, I can’t have characters disappearing into the side of a mountain.

Mr. Price is typing some code into the overhead projector. All the computers have a screen protector to prevent cheating, so I can do whatever I want back here. I log in to my OtherLANDS server and get out a notebook to start “taking notes.”

And there, waiting right on top, is this morning’s e-mail from Nightmare.

My finger hovers over the Ban Player button.

I do it. I click it.

And then I delete his e-mail.

It’s over. It’s done. He’s gone. He can’t bother me on here anymore. The relief is almost potent.

He can bother me on 5Core, but that site is maintained by the county school system. I can report him to an admin on there if he sends harassing messages.

I glance at the board. Mr. Price drones on, so I start sketching a map. I want to try to build an insect realm. I haven’t done anything that can fly yet, and I want a challenge. I could have swarms of bees, spiderwebs, stinging scorpions, butterflies that drop healing potions … Hmm.

My computer flashes at me.

A new message. My eyes lock on the sender, and I freeze.

Friday, March 16      12:26 p.m.

From: N1ghtmare2

To: Azure M

Nice try.

You’ve just made this personal.